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Monday, January 16, 2012

NSM Week 2: Our Weekly Household Budget

Before I get into the details of my shopping trips, I am super happy to say that this week I earned $45 by selling $20 worth of Luke’s old clothes, an oven hood we bought for our last house and didn’t install before we moved, a DVD, some coffee mugs, and some Christmas items on the Facebook resale group I mentioned last time.

That means that so far this month I’ve brought in a total of $174, which means I only need $26 to reach my goal of $200 to put toward debt this month! So close!! :)

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So I mentioned last week that I thought it would be interesting to write down in detail how much I spend a week on our household needs. I wanted to do this for 4 reasons:

1. To remind myself in years to come what food and household items cost in 2012 (I’m sure I will be shocked at how “cheap” it was!)

2. To show you what a family of 3 in Connecticut who eats mostly clean/whole foods spends their grocery money on

3. To actually somewhat dispel the myth that it’s not all that expensive to eat well. I COMPLETELY DISAGREE WITH THAT STATEMENT. Our family could survive on much, much less per week if I shopped solely what was on sale and cheapest. But the expense is worth it to me (remember when I said, “You pay now or you pay later, but either way, you pay?”). Sometimes it kills me to pay this much for food every week ($12 on 2.5 pounds of beef, anyone?!), but I feel so strongly about eating well that it is worth it to me.

4. To see if there were any ways I could improve when I saw it all written out – and I definitely did learn a lesson. At this point I had been making it a goal to use coupons on any name-brand item I bought – and overall, I did well on that front. But I’m going to try harder to really get the best deal on those non-couponable items (like baby carrots, for instance). That might mean some more trips to Wal-Mart are in my future (ick – I realllly don’t like that place!) but I think it would be financially beneficial right now.

I used a couple of letters to designate certain things I wanted to remember:

S = the item was on sale C = I used a coupon D = I used a Dollar Doubler coupon WL = I bought this specifically to aid in my weight loss (not a normal purchase for me) * = I bought this specifically for Luke to help fill in the nutritional gaps in his diet; not a normal purchase for me if he was eating normally

{Story about the pillow: my husband has hated his pillow for a while and it frequently gives him neck pain. Last week he said, “Honey, do you think in February we could buy a new pillow for me?” Ummmmm….I got the poor man a pillow this month. lol}

On Friday I bought pastured eggs from our Pastor’s family ($4) and Saturday I bought some more milk since my husband was out and we were having guests and I wanted some available for their kiddos. It came to $2.69 – and I had to pay with a dollar bill and spare change I found around the house. Awesome. Not my first choice but you better believe I was not whipping out that debit card!

So that, my friends, is how you spend $141.06 in food and household items for one week. (My budget for all things food and household related is $140. I stretched it by using spare change to buy the milk this week.}

Depressing, right?! I see a few areas I can improve on, so that’s encouraging, at least.

So those of you trying to stick to cash – only: did you stick to the plan? Did you pull out your debit or credit card? Let me know! We’re halfway through the month – we can do this! :)

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I am so glad that you are here! I'm a young wife and mom just writing about life. I have a whole lot of interests, and I write a little bit about each of them. My blog title serves to remind me that everything I have is a result of God and Him alone. Be sure to let me know you stopped by - have a wonderful day!